people exempt, as they are under the Pope, from military service; and
I should hope that if the Legates taxed them, the taxes paid would be
as so many masses said to get my soul out of the purgatory of perished
capitals. Finally, I should trust that in the sanctified keeping of
the Legates my mortal part would rest as sweetly as bones laid in
hallowed earth brought from Jerusalem; and that under their serene
protection I should be forever secure from being in any way exhumed
and utilized by the ruthless hand of Progress.

However, as I said, this is a mere personal preference, and other old
cities might feel differently. Indeed, though disposed to condole with
Ferrara upon the fact of her having become part of modern Italy, I
could not deny, on better acquaintance with her, that she was still
almost entirely of the past. She has certainly missed that ideal
perfection of non-existence under the Popes which I have just
depicted, but she is practically almost as profoundly at rest under
the King of Italy. One may walk long through the longitude and
rectitude of many of her streets without the encounter of a single
face: the place, as a whole, is by no means as lively as Pompeii,
where there are always strangers; perhaps the only cities in the world
worthy to compete with Ferrara in point of agreeable solitude are
Mantua and Herculaneum. It is the newer part of the town--the modern
quarter built before Boston was settled or Ohio was known--which is
loneliest; and whatever motion and cheerfulness are still felt in
Ferrara linger fondly about the ancient holds of life--about the
street before the castle of the Dukes, and in the elder and narrower
streets branching away from the piazza of the Duomo, where, on market
days, there is a kind of dreamy tumult. In the Ghetto we were almost
crowded, and people wanted to sell us things, with an enterprise
that contrasted strangely with shopkeeping apathy elsewhere. Indeed,